Trump removes Mike Waltz as national security adviser after Signalgate scandal, nominates him for UN ambassador

John T. Bennett, CQ-Roll Call on May 1, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has decided to remove Mike Waltz from his post as national security adviser and will instead nominate him to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role,” Trump wrote in a Thursday afternoon social media post.

Trump also announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would serve as national security adviser in the interim.

Waltz is Trump’s second pick for the U.N. ambassador position after New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, whose nomination for the post was scuttled in March amid concerns over Republicans’ narrow majority in the House.

Earlier in the day, a source with knowledge of the situation said the president had decided to oust Waltz, a former Republican congressman from Florida, and his top deputy, Alex Wong, from their national security perches.

The West Wing shakeup is the first of the second Trump administration and evoked a feeling of the chaos that at times dominated the president’s first term.

Waltz came under fire in March following revelations that a journalist from The Atlantic was inadvertently added to a Signal chat about administration plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen.

Several Democratic lawmakers had called for Waltz to step aside, and even some Republican members on national security committees had raised concerns about Waltz’s — and other administration national security officials’ — use of the commercial messaging app to discuss sensitive details of coming U.S. military operations.

When asked for a reaction to what initially appeared to be Waltz’s firing of Waltz, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said it was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also on the group chat, who should have been axed.

“The person who really should go is the secretary of Defense. He should be fired, literally before the end of the day. Mike Waltz, I think, is the fall guy here,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Armed Services Committee.

In the initial fallout from the Signal scandal, Trump defended Waltz, an Army veteran, calling him “a good man” and declaring that his top civilian national security adviser had “learned a lesson.”

During a Cabinet meeting Wednesday at the White House, Waltz praised Trump for his first 100 days in office.

“But pulling this great team together, Mr. President, everything from revitalizing shipyards to cyber to space that takes this entire team working together, it’s an honor to serve you in this administration,” Waltz said. “And I think the world is far better, far safer for it.”

Trump had previously admitted that the use of Signal was a misstep while also defending all of the administration officials involved. The president reportedly did not want to fire Waltz and Wong until enough time had passed so it could be described as part of a West Wing reorganization.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist accidentally added to the Signal chat, told MSNBC on Thursday morning that when asked about lessons from the episode during a recent interview, Trump replied, “Don’t use Signal?” The departure of Waltz and Wong was first reported by journalist Mark Halperin.

The duo’s exit from the West Wing comes as Trump is slated to spend a long weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida after a Thursday night commencement address at the University of Alabama. And it will allow Rubio and other national security aides to prepare Trump next week for the first extended foreign trip of his second term, to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.

The president is slated to depart for that high-stakes trip on May 11.

Waltz appeared on Fox News earlier Thursday morning to tout a long-awaited rare earth minerals deal the Trump administration signed with Ukraine.

“This deal is good for the American taxpayer that is recouping the billions of dollars that we’ve put into supporting Ukraine. It’s good for Ukraine in helping it grow and helping it grow the pie in terms of its development and reconstruction. … All of this nobody said could be done. President Trump said, ‘Get it done.’”

Waltz was first elected to Congress in 2018, representing a safely red House seat on Florida’s eastern coast. He resigned from the chamber on Jan. 20, the same day Trump was sworn in again inside the Capitol Rotunda. Republican Randy Fine won a high-profile special election to succeed Waltz last month.

Waltz’s nomination as U.N. ambassador will need to win Senate approval. Stefanik’s nomination advanced out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January but did not come up for a floor vote. She has since rejoined the House GOP brass as chairwoman of House Republican leadership.

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Mark Satter contributed to this report.

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